Phase 2 A Hop Skip and a Jumpdrive
by CLS-SamuraiJack
Summary: Having seen the new BPO plans for the Orca Mining ship and roamed around the Empress's Cap Yards as they churn out Orca's.... SJ has a brain wave.


**The SJ Chronicles... Phase 2... A Hop Skip and a Jumpdrive?**

_Having seen the new BPO plans for the Orca Mining ship and roamed around the Empress's Cap Yards as they churn out Orca's.... SJ has a brain wave._

The door hissed open. The sounds of the busy dockyard echoed into the office. Boots clomped into the room.  
"Caytlyn?"  
"Yes Jack?" she sighs. She knows that tone of voice. He's got another hair-brained scheme.  
"I gotta idea. Retrofitting and some minor upgrades."  
"To a mining ship?"  
"Yeah..."

Caytlyn Rose put down her chocolate and moved over to the drawing boards.  
"Load Orca project. Prepare modifications. Save to Sj's Files."

SamuraiJack pored over the blueprints.

"Look. If we dropped a small jump drive in the back of the cargo bay and partitioned it off that would give us jump capability. She's small enough to use the gates too. Gives us surprise and escape route. Think old style raider ship. Cut cargo and ship bays in half. Boost the Drone pod in there would give us light fighter and some heavy drone cover. Ship bay would be big enough for some tacklers/probers and cyno ship? Topside we'd need those mining arrays changed for 6 AAA pods. Short range I think. She's too small to mount anything heavy unless we spinal mount it."

Caytlyn looked at him sharply when he mentioned the spinal mount point.

"And the first time you fire it, you'll break her back. You remember what happened LAST time you did something like that?"

"Hey it would be a hell of a surprise to battleships." SJ grinned.

"... and to the crew..." Caytlyn muttered.

"Ok. Put those mods on. Switch the cargo tractor emitters for smaller ones for fighter/drone recovery. Need to boost the power conduits for shield upgrades and hardeners. She already has warfare link capability just need to tweak it for combat ones."

Slowly the Orca morphed into a more dangerous looking beast. Flakguns, Fighter bays, larger shield emitters, field arrays for the Jumpdrive, docking/retrieval bay.

"Now give her the Machariel paint job... Now _thats_ a strike carrier... and worthy of the title Killer Whale." SJ beamed happily.

Caytlyn mused... it wasn't actually that bad. Limited but possible and definatly packing a punch.

"Trust you to turn a perfectly good mining ship into something lethal." she muttered.

The comm pinged.

"Ah there you are!" Caytlyn said. "You better get up here. SJ's had another one of his ideas..."

"Oh..." drifted out of the comm.

5 minutes later the door hissed open and Ramius Monteagne strode in.

"So what hair-brained scheme have you got now... and is it better than the spinal mounted Rokh that you exploded last year?" he asked.

"Yes it is... and i told you she needed bigger conduits... Not my fault the field generators overloaded and blew out the grid." moaned SJ.

"Oh yes... Putting a dread gun and generators on a battleship wont have any drawbacks... oh no." Ramius shook his head and strode to the drawing table.

"So what is..." Ramius's voice tailed off... "You haven't."

"He has." said Caytlyn.

"What? Its viable... and she's evil."

Ramius flicked through the modifications.

"She'll be heavy. About double a standard carrier agility thou. Jump drive is limited but better than blackops. She's vulnerable at the rear."

"Yeah cant help it. Engines and Jumpdrive there. No place for rear guns. I did well getting some AA and cover. Her drones and fighters will be primary defence/offence. She needs tacklers, probe ship, cyno monkey. But she packs a punch. Nice little addition to a raider group" said SJ.

"Hence the paint job? She would make a nice surprise package. Being able to drop fighters would help out a lot with small groups."

Caytlyn sighed, looked at Ramius and SJ babbling more tech speak and wandered off to oversee the Cap Yards. Boys and their toys. They would be there for hours tweaking the design. She had never understood why you needed to shoot people. It was so much more fun just stealing their wallet.

The comm beeped. "Yes?"  
"They agreed. They want another 3 Orca's and a Naglfar." said her cousin Menolly.  
"Tell them standard rates and its 50% extra if they want it rushed." Cayt smiled. The wallet was looking good this month...


End file.
